


Team Duan-Knight and the Five Year Plan

by Schuyler



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Domesticity, F/M, Marriage, making it work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schuyler/pseuds/Schuyler
Summary: Shitty and Lardo make a five-year plan. And that plan comes with a further 18 year commitment.





	Team Duan-Knight and the Five Year Plan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunfair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunfair/gifts).



> Thanks to blackbird for the beta! And thanks to sunfair, since I shamelessly ripped off an idea we had like two years ago. I figured you'd appreciate it.

**April 2016**

Shitty’s laptop has been on the table so long that he’s had to wake it up several times. And every time he does, Larissa’s eyes dart back to the six figures on there. “I don’t want you to give up your soul,” she says. 

“Come on. You know that’s not gonna happen. It’s five years. Two summer internships, the bar, and then two years of getting that big law paycheck. We can pay down your loans, put a down payment on a place, and then I’ll find something that lets me be home more. Maybe we’ll be ready for a kid by then?” 

“They’re my loans,” she says. 

“No, we’re a team now. That’s what the shiny ring I gave you is all about. And you can tell me not to take this job. We’re making a plan *together.*” 

Shitty has done his research. Hart & Collins is the most progressive of Boston’s big-law firms. The managing partner is a woman, they offer domestic partner benefits, they even do pro-bono work for a transgender youth shelter. But they’re still big-law. Eighty hour weeks, always on call, Shitty running himself into the ground for mostly corporate clients. He decided he could hack it long enough to get them started, independent, and then he could figure out a way to be home more, so she wouldn’t have to leave her job to take care of the kid she’d said she wanted with him. They could split it. Be a team. 

“I guess I can handle being a fancy lawyer’s wife for that long,” she says. 

He whoops loud, because of course he does.

  
  


**July 2017**

The first summer had been fine. Lardo was fresh out of college. She moved into Shitty’s apartment and spent her time hanging out with friends and looking for a job. He came home late and tumbled into their bed and let her give him backrubs and cuddles. When he had nights off, they smoked pot on the balcony and drank beers and made plans for the amazing vacation they were going to take when he was done with law school.

Summer two was turning into a struggle. The vacation had turned into a honeymoon, as Shitty’s advisor had laughed at the idea of having a wedding during his time at Hart & Collins. So now they had to get married between the bar and Shitty’s start date. But Shitty was working 80 hour weeks, leaving wedding planning in Lardo’s hands. 

“Bits. I don’t want to do this.” 

“Okay, sweetheart. Do what? I’m gonna need details.”

“Get married.” She flops on her back on the floor, crushing brochures from a dozen wedding venues under her back. 

“You want to get married. You don’t want to plan a wedding.” She makes a gagging noise at the thought. “You don’t have to get all serious about it,” he says. “Just think of a place you guys like, call them, and see if they’ll let you have a wedding. Think of a restaurant you like, call them, and see if they cater.”

“Chipotle caters.”

“I’m not going to tell the bride she can’t have everything she wants, but no.” She groans again and rolls over, smushing her face against her iPad. “Do you want me to come down there and help?”

“Yes.” 

  
  


**May 2018**

“Are you frustrated with me?” Shitty asks. It’s almost midnight, he’s still doing bar prep and Lardo is making custom placecards for every wedding guest.

“No. It’s the situation.” He leans over so he can rest his forehead against her shoulder. “We made this plan. We made all these plans in advance, and I knew what I was getting into. But this has been a lot of work and I have to manage it on my own.” She rakes her nails through his hair. It’s not the first time she’s vented about this and there’s no way it will be the last. She refuses to make him skip homework to help. If he fails this fucking thing, three years into their five-year plan, she’s going to murder him. 

She turns and kisses his forehead. “Okay, enough slacking, Knight. Back to work.” He groans, but returns to his book while she readies another stack of cards.

  
  


**September 2019**

Larissa Duan-Knight has a job she loves teaching mixed-media art to kids, an apartment she really feels at home in, and a husband she hasn’t seen in four days. (He says he was home between 1:30am and 5am on Wednesday, but she doesn’t believe him.) But they’re a team, so she stops by on Thursday with a fresh shirt and kisses. (The other associates are very jealous and Shitty tells them they should get their own badass wives.)

He finally texts on Friday at midnight to say he’s done and he was on his way home, so she gets out of bed and orders all the Chinese food. 

He stumbles in the front door to find Lardo in one of his shirts, eating an eggroll. “I love you,” he says, dragging himself to the couch so he can faceplant into her stomach. “I love you so much and I’m dying.” 

She scratches his scalp. “Lucky for you, Red Bamboo’s kung pao is basically medicine.”

“So are you.” She smiles. “I want to quit.”

“Then you should quit. This isn’t worth it.”

He lies there, quiet, while her fingers drag across his scalp over and over. “It’s for our kid,” he says. “Your loan’s done and we’re putting away for a house. When we’ve got the down payment, I’ll quit. But I want to make a home for our kid.” 

She curls down to kiss the top of his head, because she loves him to distraction. “Then get up and eat something. I’m going to make sure you survive this.” He lifts his head and crawls up to kiss her with a smile. “Are you off tomorrow?” she asks. He nods. “There’s beer in the fridge.” 

“I’m so glad I married you.” 

  
  


**June 2021**

Lardo walks into the new apartment and stops dead on the threshold. This is it. This is the end of the five-year plan. Shitty waited until his bonus check and then left Hart & Collins for a boutique law firm made up of lawyers with kids working regular hours, half the time for expensive clients and the other half for local charities. They put a down payment on a three-bedroom apartment equidistant between the studio Lardo worked out of and Shitty’s new office. And she’s two months pregnant. If she cries, there’s only Shitty there to witness it, and he’d been a fucking waterfall ever since the pregnancy test had come out positive, so he can keep his mouth shut. 

  
  


**September 2022**

“Who’s home? Who’s home? Is it Mommy?” Shitty croons at Mia. She wiggles and kicks and reaches out for Lardo, who grabs her baby before she’s even out of her coat. 

“Hey, kid,” she says. 

“How was the first day of class?” Shitty asks, shutting the door behind her and taking her bag. 

“Good. The kids seemed really excited. How’s the law?”

“You know,” he says, waving at the home office where his desk and Mia’s playpen live. “Legal. Mia got to go to her first staff meeting today. They basically demanded that I put her up on the video conference so they could see her chubby perfect face.”

“Look at you, already being a business lady,” she says, bouncing Mia. Mia giggles and reaches for Lardo’s hair.

  
  


**December 2030**

“Are you mad at me?” Mia asks.

“Hell no,” Shitty says. “I’m never mad at you. I’m confused a lot though. Why didn’t you go to your art lesson?” 

She crawls onto the couch between her parents for cuddles. “I like math. I’m not good at art. I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“Don’t be sorry. I think everybody’s good at art, but you don’t have to like it. You probably should have told us that before you started disappearing. We were scared.”

“Mrs. Cooper asked me if I wanted to come see what the robotics team was working on.” 

“Wait, that’s actually a valid reason,” Shitty said. “Since when does your school have a robotics team? That’s badass!” 

“Since this year!” she says, perking up. “I didn’t join because it’s at the same time as art.” 

“Yo, we would hella move your art lesson in favor of ROBOTS. Now tell me what these little mad geniuses are up to.” 

  
  
  


**December 2040**

Mia remembers how gross her parents were when she was a tween. She’d come home and they’d be making out in the kitchen. They had date night and seemed to actually look forward to it. They were always holding hands at school events and curled up together in the stands at her robotics championships. But then, when she went off to college, it became a thing she missed about them. She would Facetime them so she could see them snuggled up on the couch with their ancient dog, Celly. And now she’s finally home for the holidays, watching hockey with her head in her mom’s lap and Celly squishing her thighs. She doesn’t even mind. Her mom does this thing where she runs her fingers across Mia’s scalp, long strokes, over and over, and it makes her zone out. “I swear, you are just like your father,” she says, and Mia smiles. That’s not so bad.


End file.
